The kick-off meeting for the HE-AVANTiS project was held on Friday, January 19, 2024, at the Hotel Park Inn in Leuven, Belgium. The meeting was attended by both on-site and remote participants and was a critical initial gathering that marked the start of the project implementation. AVANTiS (Sustainable, decarbonized vanadium, titanium, and iron extraction from Europe’s low-grade vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite deposits) is a collaborative project between research institutions and private-sector organizations with ten partners and three associate partners. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together project partners, stakeholders, representatives from the European Commission, and other relevant individuals to provide an overview of the project’s goals, objectives, scope, and expectations.
Peter Tom Jones from KU Leuven gave an opening remark, welcoming the participants and providing a brief overview of the purpose and significance of the kick-off meeting. Representatives from each government and private partner institution introduced their organizations and their role in the HE-AVANTiS project. In addition, to build familiarity among team members and stakeholders, participants introduced themselves and their roles in the project.
Ewelina Rathje, the Project Advisor at HaDEA, has presented the role of the European Health and Digital Executive Agency in the entire project life cycle. This role includes scientific and financial project monitoring, reporting reviews, dissemination of results, promoting actions, and feeding project outcomes into the policy-making process on behalf of the European Commission. Additionally, Daniel Cios, a Policy Officer with EC DG GROW, provided an overview of the European policy context of raw materials, and Galya Lazarova gave the guidelines on the financial aspect. The EU has set benchmarks for strategic raw materials (SRM) extraction, processing, and recycling capacities to achieve at least 10%, 40%, and 25%, respectively, by 2030. The AVANTiS project is significant in supporting the European Union’s strategic goals for critical raw materials, sustainability, and resource security.
During the meeting, all the leaders of work packages provided an overview of their goals and objectives. They presented a draft implementation plan for the first 18 months of the project, including expected deliverables and key milestones. This plan demonstrates the timeline of the project and critical points. Furthermore, they outlined the main resources, roles, and responsibilities of each partner within the work package. They also discussed the schedule of material and data flow between work packages and identified dependencies and potential risks.
In the afternoon, the technical work packages (WP1, WP2, WP3) held separate parallel technical sessions to discuss and summarize immediate action points. This led to initiating the project implementation, clarifying the critical path, identifying potential risks and mitigation strategies, establishing communication channels, and sharing relevant information regarding collaboration within the team.
During the kick-off meeting, the participants were allowed to ask any questions they had about the project to ensure that they left with a clear understanding. In the end, KU Leuven, the organizer of the meeting summarized the main points discussed during the meeting and identified the next steps to be taken, which includes the preparation of a detailed implementation plan.
The HE-AVANTIiS kick-off meeting established a solid foundation for the project, ensuring collaboration and clarity on expectations and responsibilities.
Author: Tegist Chernet (GTK) – AVANTiS WP1 Leader
